Examine All the Pieces of Our Recent Past
by kabensi
Summary: Quinn's staying at school during her spring break and Rachel Berry shows up at her door. Set shortly after I Do.


It's spring break and Quinn's been deflecting party invitations since Friday night. She really has no desire to go out and drink with strangers, though some of the girls from her study group are nice enough that maybe they could make it through a night without getting totally plastered. But tonight, she really isn't feeling it. Her roommate's in Florida until the end of the week and she has the room all to herself for four more nights.

So, when she moves to answer the knock at her door, she starts with, "It's Tuesday, isn't that a night of rest or some-"

But it's not one of her study group girls. It's not even anyone from her dorm.

It's Rachel.

"Quinn." Rachel leans in the doorway and it doesn't take more than a few seconds for Quinn to realize that Rachel is drunk. "Quinn Fabray. I'm so mad at you."

"How..." Quinn pulls her into the room and then leans past her, looking up and down the hallway. "Is someone with you?"

"No. I came on the train. By myself." Rachel staggers a little as she walks toward the bed closest to the door. It's not Quinn's.

Quinn shuts the door and turns around to survey the situation. "Why are you drunk?"

"I went," Rachel slips a little as she sits on the bed. "I went to look for you... your room... but I didn't know where it was. But some very nice boys told me how to get over here."

"That's..." Quinn's a combination of furious (because anything could have happened to Rachel in the party climate out there) and relieved (because Rachel is here, safe in her room). "That still doesn't explain why you're drunk."

"Oh! The Jello shooters."

"The guys gave you Jello shots?"

"No, the girls. With the..." Rachel's hands rest on her own breasts. "They had big ones." She lies down on the bed. "Everyone here is very nice." After a moment, she sits back up. "I'm a little spinny."

"You should probably have some water." Quinn moves for the mini-fridge and pulls out a bottle of Dasani, unscrews the cap, and hands the drink to Rachel.

"Thank you. You're a very good hostess."

Quinn sits on her own bed and tucks her hands under her flannel covered legs. It's spring break, but it's still chilly out. She realizes Rachel doesn't have a coat, only a cardigan. "Is that what you wore from New York?"

"Hmm?" Rachel looks down at herself. "No, I had my coat. The one," her hand drags back and forth over her body, "with the stripes."

Okay, so tomorrow they get to figure out who has Rachel's coat. And why is Rachel even here? She wants to ask, but Rachel's blinking her eyes shut and slowly tilting sideways. "Okay," Quinn stands up and crosses the room so she can take Rachel's shoes off and cover her with a blanket. She sets the water bottle on the nightstand and watches as Rachel pulls the blanket to her chin.

"Santana said you'd be mad, but you don't seem mad."

Quinn's not mad. But she's confused as hell.

She wants to ask what Santana has to do with anything, but Rachel's already making light snoring sounds. It can wait. Quinn's just glad her friend is safe and didn't pass out at a party somewhere on campus.

She picks up her phone and texts Santana: **Any idea why Rachel just showed up at my dorm?**

As she waits for a response, she picks up her copy of Catching Fire. The movie won't be out for months, but she never minds re-reading her favorites. Katniss is a particularly interesting character to her, maybe because she identifies more that a little with some of the character themes.

It's maybe twenty minutes before her screen lights up with: **That sneaky little yard gnome! She said she was going to a movie.**

**She's drunk and sleeping in my room.**

Thirty seconds after the message sends, Quinn's phone is ringing. It's Santana.

"So, you have no idea why she's here?" Quinn asks, trying to keep her voice low enough not to wake up Rachel.

"I told you, I thought she was going to see some sad Streisand musical revival screening or something. She's drunk?"

"Yeah, she said she was at a party and had Jello shots."

"Damn, go Rachel."

"Santana, what if she hadn't made it here! Neither of us would have known where she was."

"She's not a child. I mean, she's not any taller than a fifth grader, but she's an adult. What?! Ugh, hold on. Kurt's bitching about something." There's a muffled scratching sound and voices in the background. "Hey, Quinn, I'll call you back."

And Quinn's left alone with no more information than she had when Rachel first appeared in her doorway.

She goes back to her book for another ten pages or so, but the Rachel gets up and starts moving around the room until she opens the closet. She stares inside it for a moment, then turns to Quinn.

"What happened to your bathroom?"

"It's down the hall. Crap, are you sick?"

Rachel shakes her head. "No."

Quinn stands up and opens the door for her. "Down there." She points to a door maybe twenty feet down the hallway. Rachel shuffles past her and she seems able to at least walk okay, but Quinn feels compelled to at least make sure she doesn't try to wander into someone else's room, so she follows her to the entry of the shared bathroom and makes she that Rachel at least gets into a stall before she heads back toward her room. She busies herself with erasing some old notes from the dry erase board on the outside of her door and she's relieved when Rachel appears back in the hallway after a couple of minutes.

"You okay?" Quinn asks.

"Mmhmm." Rachel crawls right back into bed and burrows under the blanket.

Quinn sighs and shuts the door. She can't even really be upset about any of this because she hasn't seen Rachel much at all since graduation. She barely saw her at Mr. Schue and Miss PIllsbury's almost-wedding and before that, she'd come to see her once in New York. She's been a terrible friend.

She didn't know what she was expecting when she gave Rachel that train pass. Maybe she figured they'd meet up for weekend lunch dates. Or that they'd invite each other to scene presentations for their character study classes. Those things haven't happened. And she definitely never imagined Rachel would show up drunk and stumble into her roommate's conveniently vacant bed.

"Quinn?"

"Yes?"

"I'm cold."

Quinn looks over to see Rachel with the blanket pulled tightly around her, but she's shaking. It's likely a combination of the cool weather, the poorly insulated freshman dorms, and the alcohol in Rachel's bloodstream. She has a sleeping bag in her closet, but she'd have to dig it out since it's behind a bunch of other crap.

"Here, just... come over here." She pulls up the covers on her bed and slips her legs underneath. Rachel complies and abandons her current spot to join Quinn. Immediately, she tucks herself into a ball against Quinn's side. Quinn doesn't even bother to ask if it's better, because Rachel has a content smile on her face and it looks like she's seconds away from falling back to sleep. It's no wonder she was cold. She's wearing a skirt, though it's longer than the ones she used to wear in high school. And this is a case where Quinn can't comment about knee socks, because they're the only thing covering the rest of Rachel's legs.

She makes sure the blanket is fully covering Rachel on her side, then tries to go back to reading. But now she's thinking about Rachel's legs. Not, like, in a sexual way. She's just remembering things. Like how she used to wonder what Rachel would look like in a Cheerios skirt, because the pleated plaid ones she wore suggested she'd do the uniform justice. Rachel could have definitely been a Cheerio if she weren't so infuriatingly stubborn. Coach never would have put up with that.

And that's what annoyed Quinn so much about last year, when it came to Finn and the wedding and Rachel basically becoming some Stepford version of herself. It wasn't like her. It was some pod-person version of the girl who never let anyone, not even Quinn herself, compromise what she wanted.

She's just glad everything turned out the way it did, with Rachel in New York, doing her own thing, living her own life.

Maybe Quinn wishes she played a bigger role in it. If she even has a role, at all.

But she must, if Rachel's here, in her bed.

For a split second, there's a thought in the back of Quinn's mind, one about Rachel and her bed and the kind of comment Puck might make about it. But it's not one she dignifies with any further reflection. Not because Quinn wouldn't consider it. She did, after all, have that incredible night with Santana only a month ago. And, okay, she kind of orchestrated it, because being with a woman was something that... had been on her mind for a while.

Quinn forces herself to go back to her book and it's fine for a while, except on this read-though it's even more obvious that Johanna Mason basically wants to make out with Katniss and that's not helping keep Quinn's train of thought from derailing right into wondering what it would be like to kiss Rachel.

"Dammit," Quinn says, closing the book and tossing it to the foot of the bed.

She had a lot of time to reflect on plenty of things last year, while she was in recovery. Even before the accident, there were more than a few nights spent with an Eva Cassidy playlist and a lot of feelings she refused to acknowledge for so long. But Rachel's insistence on getting married before even graduating from high school had Quinn seething inside. It wasn't even about Finn, really. It was just the sheer stupidity of Rachel giving up on her dreams.

Quinn shuts off her lamp and turns on her side, so that Rachel's behind her. But she can't get comfortable that way, so she turns around and before she has a chance to try and wake Rachel up enough to at least get her to flip the other way, Rachel's head tucks under her chin and all Quinn can do is drop her arm over the sleeping, still drunk, form that's so comfortably nestled against her.

It's surprising how easily Quinn drifts off.

Waking up is not nearly as peaceful an experience.

There's shuffling and a clatter and when Quinn opens her eyes, she sees Rachel bending down to pick up the hand lotion she's knocked off the edge of Quinn's desk.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for my phone."

"Oh," Quinn sits up and rubs a hand over her face, trying to wake up. There's dim sunlight streaming through the window, but it's still pretty early because the clock reads 6:42. "Um," she tries to remember the last time she saw Rachel's phone. Except she doesn't remember her having one at all. "Is it... in your coat?" she asks.

Rachel stops to think. Her hair is mussed and her cardigan has creases in it from being slept in. "It must be."

"Then it's not here."

Rachel presses the heels of her hands against her eyes and she groans. "I left it at the party."

"So you remember last night."

"I had a few Jello shots, Quinn. I didn't do any kick stands."

"Keg stands."

"I need to find my phone. It has all my important contacts for auditions, not to mention my Best of Barbra iTunes library."

"Do you even know where you were?"

"I think I can retrace my steps."

It's so early and Quinn doubts anyone will be awake. But she knows Rachel's going to be intolerable until they find her phone. And her coat. Hopefully, they're together.

"Fine." Quinn tosses the covers back and gets up out of bed.

"May I borrow a toothbrush?"

"I only have one."

"Oh."

Quinn can tell that Rachel's at least mildly hungover and she's probably embarrassed that she's even in this situation. "Hold on." She digs around for the small suitcase she took to the wedding. In the inside pocket there's still one unused disposable mini-toothbrush in the two-pack that she bought at the hotel gift shop after that night she spent with Santana. "Here."

"Thank you."

"Bathroom's-"

"I remember."

While Rachel's brushing her teeth, Quinn changes her clothes, pulling on a pair of jeans and a thick blue and gray striped sweater. She wonders if Rachel will want something else to wear while they try to track down her things. When Rachel returns from the bathroom, Quinn offers then access to her wardrobe and then heads down the hall to handle her own oral hygiene.

Once she's back in her room, she finds that Rachel sitting on the edge of her bed, wrapped in the exact trench coat Quinn planned to wear.

"Don't you want pants or anything?"

"I'm fine."

Quinn finds another coat and slips it on. She grabs her keys and phone, stuffs them in her pocket, then loops a scarf around her neck. "Do you want one?" she asks, about ready to open the closet to select one for her.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"About scarves?"

"About Santana."

"What about Sa-" Quinn pauses. She doesn't mean... she's not asking about... is she? She takes in the sight of Rachel, still perched on the bed, expectantly looking at her. She is. She's definitely asking her about... that. "When do we even talk about anything?" That's probably the wrong question to ask.

Rachel doesn't seem to have an answer to that. "We should find my phone."

Quinn opens the door and lets Rachel follow her out.

When they reach the door that leads out of the dorm building, Rachel pushes through it first. She pauses at the bottom of the steps, then points to the left. "This way."

Quinn easily catches up to her. "How far?"

"I can probably find it by myself."

"That worked out really well for you last night."

"It was a mistake to just come up here. I know that."

"Why didn't you just call me?"

Rachel stops walking and turns to face Quinn. "I don't know, Quinn. Maybe I thought that maybe something this important was worth more than just a phone call. I don't know what I was thinking."

Quinn rolls her eyes and continues down the sidewalk. "You're so dramatic about everything."

"Better than keeping everything to myself," Rachel counters from behind her.

Quinn can't be bothered to reply. She can't even understand why Rachel thinks this is any of her business, anyway. They walk for a little while and pass another dormitory. "Was it this one?"

"No, it had more brick." Rachel's arms are crossed over her body as she tries to keep warm.

"There are gloves in one of the pockets," Quinn informs her.

"Why?"

"To keep your hands warm."

"No, why did you sleep with her? Do you... like her?"

Quinn laughs. "Santana? No. I mean, sure. She's... hot. If that's what you're into. But we... it was... it didn't mean anything."

"I slept with Finn that night," Rachel blurts out.

Again, Quinn laughs. "Okay."

"Why is that funny?"

"It's just... not a surprise. Will you put the damn gloves on?"

Rachel relents and fishes a pair of yellow gloves from the pocket of the trench coat. "It didn't mean anything, either. In fact, it was kind of the end of things."

"Yeah, right." Quinn makes it to the next building before she realizes that Rachel's not walking with her, anymore. She turns around to see Rachel standing maybe twenty feet behind her. "What?"

Rachel looks at Quinn, studying her. "It's nothing. It's... I think the house is over there." She points to a row of residences that house a few fraternities. None of them have a reputation for being particularly rowdy, but they are known to party a little.

They knock on two doors where no one answers, one where a few people were still partying but it wasn't the right house. The fourth doesn't yield an answer, but Rachel has her hands cupped to the window as she peeks inside.

"This is it!" She taps on the glass. "I can see my coat."

Quinn peers over her shoulder through the glass and the open curtain. Sure enough, there's Rachel's striped vintage coat hanging over the back of an armchair. She surveys the rest of what she can see through the window and walks back to the door. She looks down at the door handle and taps her fingers on it.

"Can you pick the lock?"

"I probably could." Quinn lightly grips the handle and gives it a twist. It isn't locked. "But I don't need to." Rachel runs over to the doorway, but Quinn stops her. "Wait here. This is a stealth operation." There's a pout on Rachel's face, but she nods and watches Quinn slip into the house.

There isn't any noise from inside, probably because anyone there is passed out from the night's festivities. Judging from the beer bottles, red party cups, and tiny discarded Jello cups, it was a damn good party. Quietly, Quinn moves across the floor and quickly scoops up the jacket. There's no phone in the first pocket she checks, but the second yields an iPhone with a Bedazzled cover on it. The back features an R inside a gold star, so Quinn's pretty positive it's the right one. Images of someone appearing to catch her in the act roll through her mind, be she makes it back to the front door without incident. She presents the coat and phone to Rachel, who sighs in relief.

As they climb down the porch steps back to the sidewalk, Rachel groans. "My battery's dead."

"I have a charger."

Of course, that means they have to go back and wait for it to charge before Rachel can go home. Not that she wants to just shove Rachel back on a train to New York. But if all they're going to do is argue about Quinn's sex life, well...

Actually, just thinking about it is irritating Quinn, all over again.

"Seriously, you came all the way up here to bitch at me for a one night stand?"

"Yes."

Quinn pushes out an exasperated sigh and doesn't speak to Rachel all the way back to her room. Her coat shrugs off her shoulders and lands on the back of her desk chair. "Charger's on the desk." She grabs the box of NutriGrain bars she keeps on her bookshelf, pulls one out, and tears off the wrapper. She's tired, she's annoyed, and she's hungry. At least one of those can be fixed in the moment. "Here." She shoves the box toward Rachel's general direction. She might be in a shit mood, but she's doesn't have to be a total bitch.

Rachel plugs in her phone, but the battery's so dead that it will take a few minutes to even pull enough charge to turn on. In the meantime, Rachel rattles the wrapper to her own breakfast bar as she strips it clear of the foil cover.

They sit on opposite ends of Quinn's bed as they eat in silence and Quinn's fine with that. Which, of course means that Rachel breaks the moment with something else to say once she's finished chewing.

"Is it something you would do, again?"

"Let you in? No." But Quinn knows full well what Rachel's asking her. She picks up a water bottle and takes a swig before giving in and answering, "With Santana? Probably not."

"I think she feels the same way about the situation."

"Well, that's great for my ego."

"You're making this so much more difficult than it needs to be."

"I don't even know what this is."

Rachel fidgets with the edges of the coat, the one of Quinn's that she's still wearing. "I just always had this thought in the back of my head that... if you were to... want to explore that part of yourself... you'd... tell me."

Quinn plays with the cap to her water bottle. "I'm sorry we haven't really been close since we started college. I should have made more of an effort."

"I... yes, I agree. But I'm not just talking about that, I..." Rachel shrugs. "I mean that I thought you'd want to explore that stuff with me." Her voice is quieter than is almost ever is.

"You..." Quinn's eyes are wide, because this is absolutely brand new news to her and she isn't sure she's understanding it correctly. "Thought I'd come to you for... sex?"

"It seemed like a more plausible option than you and Santana."

"Santana and I have been friends for years, she's totally gay, and she's a sucker for blondes. And I'm sorry, Rachel, but why in the hell would I even think you'd be interested? All you ever did all last year was obsess over Finn and being Mrs. Hudson and practically threw your entire life out the window."

Rachel seems to be speechless, because she's opening her mouth and nothing's coming out. She draws in a long, heavy breath before she pushes it back out and then Quinn realizes Rachel's about to cry.

"Look, I wasn't saying that to be cruel," Quinn says, quickly leaning forward to put a gentle hand on Rachel's arm, but Rachel pulls away. "I just never really had any reason to think you'd... want to." She tries again and, this time, Rachel allows Quinn's hand to rest on her wrist. "Is that really what you came all the way up here to tell me? That you... wanted to be an option."

"Santana let it slip... we were talking about everyone we know who's hooked up with each other... because it's kind of funny... and she mentioned you. I thought it was a joke, at first. But once I realized she was serious, I just kept thinking about how much you and I... we just... grew a lot once we got to know each other. And I started thinking about things I hadn't told you. When you were in your accident, there was a lot I thought about, but I was still so caught up in what I thought I wanted." Rachel takes a steadying breath. "So, instead I just brought you fresh flowers everyday and waited for you to get better. Because I knew you would. You don't give up."

"Is that why I was practically drowning in gardenias at the hospital?"

Rachel nods.

Quinn remembers waking up to the sight of flowers and cards and stuffed animals in her room at Lima General, but the most prominent were the numerous bundles of gardenias, wrapped in green ribbon, all around the room. And with that memory, another flashes into her mind. One that suddenly makes a lot more sense than a usually clueless boyfriend being magically blessed with thoughtful insight.

"Rachel. My corsage..."

"You so desperately wanted that night to be perfect. Didn't go as well as I'd planned."

"Proms are overrated."

"You're only saying that because you didn't win."

Quinn chews on her lip, wondering if she should tell Rachel the real outcome of the senior prom queen election. "I'm saying it because high school's over."

"Things are... definitely different now."

"Yeah."

There's another wave of silence between them, but it's not awkward like the one before. Quinn's fingers trail over the back of Rachel's hand and then it flips so they're palm to palm. Rachel, being ever the instigator, is the one to lean in first, her other hand reaching up to cup Quinn's cheek.

"I came all the way up here because I wanted to do this."

Her lips find Quinn's and Quinn has no desire to resist. She's quite content to kiss back, to sigh into the contact, because it's a relief to realize that this moment is actually happening, that it's something they've both wanted, for a while.

"You're right. This is much better than a phone call," Quinn mumbles between kisses.

"Told you."


End file.
